Jessica Skowroneck was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, but lived in Sweden most of her childhood. She studied at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht and received a Bachelor of Fine Art with first class honours in 2013. In 2014 she was the winner of the the Royal Award for Modern Painting in The Netherlands. She now lives and works in the vicinity of Utrecht, regularly showing her work in The Netherlands and abroad.
‘My work revolves around nature and the search for sensitivity and intimacy. Growing up in Sweden next to a forest has had a profound impact on how I see my environment today. As a child, nature was neither something to be conquered nor something to be longed for in a romantic sense. It was simply there, and I was part of it. This total and intimate relationship with nature and all surroundings is what I want to show in my work. Part of this relating is a sense of wonder and awe at the mystery of this world and the impossibility of intellectually understanding it. Still I’m trying to reflect something of this in my paintings.’
‘Looking at Jessica’s paintings, you see silence and movement. If you open all your senses, you can hear the wind and possibly the low humming of insects, see the heat vibrating. Under the painter’s hands, strokes of paint form sand, vegetation, and stones, even as they appear to dissolve, become liquid. Back to the origin.’ (Hanne Hagenaars from the text “It’s all one,” 2021)
